MC KAY’S | WINSTON SALEM

I’ve been traveling an awful lot in recent months. For what seemed like most of my life, any travel to other cities came with an autonomous response of looking up what record stores this city might offer and planning a visit to find the round, spinning things. But I’m getting old. The world is changing and so am I. The big difference, especially this year, is that I’m culling about a thousand CDs from my too large collection.

I’ve sold off about 400 so far this year. Mostly at rock-bottom prices. And everything, including the small percentage priced at two figures, were generally priced at 20-50% below average to move them out quickly. So in light of this fact, I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to buy more CDs while I am selling off a huge chunk of what I already have because there’s insufficient room for more!

The elephant in the room is that in the current records-only market, CDs are extremely marginalized in retail. If you can find a store deigning to stock the hipster kryptonite on a silver disc, the amount of rack space given over to it is usually smaller than my own personal collection! It’s been a dispiriting couple of years trying to find anything I might want. The reaction to stopping in a record store is largely anger, these days. I’ve taken to avoiding them.

While I was enthusiastic to travel to Winston Salem to see Mitch Easter give a concert, buying music was low on my list of priorities. First was actually getting to shop in the vibrant downtown arts district for a birthday present I wanted to buy! But driving to the city, the playlist was all three Let’s Active CDs exclusively. And that’s where the trouble started.

I’ve had the wonderful “Big Plans For Everybody” album since its 1986 release. For 39 years now, I’ve been listening to “Won’t Go Wrong” and hearing, nestled in it, a chord sequence that I swear was part of the final Led Zeppelin album, “In Through The Out Door.” Which I’d not heard in the 46 years following its 1979 release. I’ve been trying to find a cheap copy of the CD of that for long years, to listen to, yes. But also to nail down which Zeppelin song on “In Through The Out Door” contained the riff that Mitch Easter had pilfered.

I specifically asked Scott Shepard at Time Traveler in Akron the last time I was there if he had a used, non-remastered, release of it hanging around. But like every other store these days, he only had the 2xCD remaster in the tiny kraft paper outer sleeve to replicate the original LP packaging. And that’s going for $20 or so.

I am not against DLX RMs of the Led Zeppelin canon. We actually own all but two of their original eight studio albums, those being “Led Zeppelin II” and “In Through The Out Door.” Some of those discs we have are in fact the 2xCD Led Zep DLX RMs, albeit ones I got at fire sale used prices. Especially the cool “Led Zeppelin III” which is the only CD of it with the spinning wheel artwork of the original LP.

There was no way I was going to pay $20 for any Led Zeppelin CD. Even one I’ve wanted for 40 years and had generally kind memories of from my brief FM Rock® period. So the morning after the Mitch Easter concert all I had to do was to drive home. I looked up to see the hours of McKay’s and they would open in 12 minutes from when I looked at 10 a.m. It made sense to go.

McKay’s is a regional chain [Tennessee, North Carolina] of stores that sell used books, DVDs, Blu-Rays, video games, records, and CDs. I have gotten some incredible finds at them in the past. The Winston Salem store had recently moved from the Greenville location about 20 minutes away because this site was three times larger than their Greenville one. It sounded like a valid reason to move for me. I walked into the store and the music section was right up front, but here’s the catch. It was all records. Thousands of records. Most priced way up there as is the current custom everywhere.

I glanced through the bins and there was nothing of interest. But I will admit that their organization was peerless. The stock was easy to browse. They even had a section marked “VERY SCRATCHED.” I looked at it, curious to see what a “very scratched” record would sell for here and the front bin said it all. If I so desired, I could buy a copy of the debut album by Foreigner, [with a gun to my head…it could happen] that was “very scratched” for only…$2.95.

The RIAA tells us that “Foreigner” [1978] by the group of the same name has sold over five million copies in the US alone. This is under no possible circumstamces a “rare” record. This is a record that is common as dirt, and yet it’s not by Pink Floyd or Fleetwood Mac, so I would think that its commercial properties were rather limited. Yet here it was, “very scratched” for $2.95. “Cheapie bins” are a record store thing. In the 80s such bins were filled with record store chaff priced from $0.25 to a dollar. But those days are far gone.

As I surveyed the record store within the larger store, my bile rose. I even saw sections of easy listening music. Now those records were priced at $0.25! But there was a small sign at the end of the row of bins. In small type, maybe 16 pt sans serif, it said “CDs are located in the back of the store…across from the restrooms.” So there were CDs here. It’s just that they were in the least desirable part of the store real estate. At that point they might as well have said “on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

It could have been worse. At least I saw the small sign!

So I headed for the back of the store. And found to my wonderment, that it had a rather large display of the silver discs! Honestly, the amount of CD stock here pretty much ran roughshod over almost every other store around the state these days. So I gave a cursory glance and deemed the prices to be fair, so I started looking at what was the biggest selection of used CDs I’ve seen in at least five years.

I immediately started getting love back from the bins. I never see ABC★★★ albums other than their greatest hits but here was a copy of “Up” for a low price. I had not been enamored of the band’s flirtation with House Music and stopped buying their releases cold in 1990 after purchasing the “One Better World” CD-5. Not picking up the thread again until “Skyscraping” seven years later.” It was time to close the circle on “Up” as well as “Abracadabra.” The latter of which I had bought as a dollar cutout and then quickly sold off in the 90s!

Then a trawl through the Blondie section showed a used copy of “Pollinator!” That was an album I almost bought new the weekend of release but demurred on and regretted the action ever since. I can’t remember ever seeing a used copy and even new copies I’ve not seen in a few years. It was mine for $6.95. Scuttlebutt on the Blondie fan underground suggested this was the pick of the highly variable reformation era albums.

And then I saw a Marianne Faithfull CD that I think was one of the few post-“Broken English” albums I didn’t already have. “Strange Weather.” Thank goodness for the Discogs app on my personal device. It confirmed that this and “A Child’s Adventure” were the only albums, other than her last four, that I needed. The $2.95 price for this was actually rock bottom!

Then I remembered that I want a lot more Judas Priest, but the METAL section was having none of that! I still need “Painkiller.” Badly. But there were zero used Judas Priest discs in there. My friend Todd’s theory‡ was looking rock solid at this point. Then I remembered the reason why I’d bothered coming here in the first place. I headed to the Led Zeppelin section and thar she blows!

Boom! Exactly what I had been seeking out for a while. A used copy of a nothing special mastering [in fact a record club pressing – the cheapskate’s friend!] of “In Through The Out Door” where the elaborate packaging had been well and truly eviscerated in the attempt by Atlantic to strip that cash cow of any assets and move ’em out! $4.95…American. I left McKay’s with a fistful of CDs at just under $20.00 for the privilege.

As Dickens said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The first half of my time there had been like a kick in the head, but ultimately, they offered exactly what I had come there looking specifically for. So that tempers my dismay at finding CDs treated like aural leprosy. But the fact remains that my expectations are so low currently on the subject of record stores, that finding a Led Zeppelin title on used CD is now what passes for a huge win these days.

-30-

‡ He says that the reason why I never find used Judas Priest CDs is because, duh… no Judas Priest fan would ever sell any of their CDs off!